Waiting for BQP fever (Scott Aaronson) Partly a review of the particle physics film "Particle Fever", and partly a post about the unique success of particle physics and cosmology in arguing that science, like art, should be done for its own sake.

Google Flu and the hubris of Big Data (Steven Salzberg) Tracking flu-related web searches seemed like a great way of tracking the ebb and flow of seasonal influenza. So why has Google's project got it so wrong?

Revenge on the Nerds (The Atlantic) First they laughed at the nerds, then they decided they were cool. Now Mike Judge (the creator of "Beavis and Butthead") is back to laughing at them again, skewering Silicon Valley and startup culture in general.